Thrift stores sell video games as plastic. The plastic is a cartridge, a disc, or a box that may not contain the disc. The price, when there is one beyond a few dollars, is the title and the completeness and the fact that it boots. A stack of sports games from a big print run is a stack of sports games. A single uncommon title with a clean label is why you read every spine before you buy the stack. This note is that reading. It lines up with what to flip and with complete in box, because games are where “complete” gets expensive and where “loose” is the normal survivor.
Cartridges
An NES cart is a label and a board inside a shell. Five screws or three screws are a production clue, not a rare variant by themselves. The title is the market. A common platformer in a decent label is still common. Pins corrode. Look at them. Do not sand them. If you cannot plug the cart into a console, the listing says untested. That word is allowed. “Works” is not allowed as a guess.
A Game Boy cart adds a save battery that is often dead after thirty years. The game may still play. The save may not. Say which. Open the expensive titles, especially the ones everyone fakes, and look at the board, or do not pay the original’s price. A Nintendo 64 cart is the same habit: label, contacts, region, tested or not. Colored shells are a specific claim. Yellowed gray plastic is not a factory color. Say yellowed.
Reproductions exist because the real carts got expensive. Label print, screws, and the board are the tells. If you are selling and you have not looked, say you have not looked. If you know it is a copy, say copy. Using the original’s comps for a fake is the false listing.
Discs
A disc is a scratch problem and a case problem. Hold it to a light. A resurfaced disc should be described as resurfaced. A disc that is not in the case is a disc. The manual and the box art are completeness for that generation. Missing manuals are normal and they change the price. A greatest-hits label is a later issue. Name it. Do not crop the label to hide the words.
Consoles are a different weight class. A system without cables, without a controller, and without a test is a parts unit. Cables are the completeness. Yellowing and a dead drive are condition. Do not buy a console to flip if you cannot test it and the price assumes it works. Local pickup is kinder than shipping a CRT, which you should not ship unless you already know how and the number is worth the broken glass. Most of the time it is not.
Boxes, manuals, and the sealed claim
Complete in box means the box, the game, the manual, and the inserts that belonged to that issue. A loose cart is not almost boxed. A crushed box is not mint. A resealed box is not factory sealed. If you cannot tell, do not say sealed. Graded games are a specialty market. A thrift cart is not secretly a graded slab. Do not price it from a headline about one.
Stickers, rental labels, and a name in marker are condition. Rental copies took a beating and they are still the game. Say rental if the sticker says rental. Some buyers want a clean label and will pay for it. They cannot pay for it if you hid the marker.
The stack problem
The store’s price is often per disc or per cart, or a bag price. The bag price is a trap when one title is good and nine are sports games, and it is a gift when you know the nine are worth the bag and the tenth is a bonus. You only know if you read the titles. Sports games from the big years are the supply. They can be a lot. They are rarely ten individual listings. Fees on a three-dollar cart are the cart.
Sort before you accept a shop’s blanket offer, too. A buyer who says a dollar a piece for the bag is making you do the averaging. Pull the one label you recognized. Then decide.
Test, or say you did not
A photo of a title screen is the best line in the listing. If you do not have a console, untested is the title word. Clean the contacts gently with alcohol and still call it untested until it boots. “Cleaned and untested” is a fine phrase. “Refurbished” is not, unless you did more than a swab and you can say what.
Dead batteries, rotten clock batteries, and a disc that boots to an error are faults. They belong in the first lines. A buyer who repairs games will still buy some of them, at a repair price. A buyer who wanted to play tonight will return the rest, and the return includes your postage. Pricing is sold comps of that fault, not of a complete tested copy.
What is worth picking up
An uncommon title you can name, at a loose-cart price, with a label you can photograph. A complete copy where the box is actually intact and the manual is present. A common game you will play, under the price of buying it from someone who already tested it. That third one is buying used, and it is the best reason to be in the aisle. The flip is the first two, and only after the fee.
Leave the sun-faded sports stack at a collector price. Leave the fake you can already see. Leave the console with no cables unless the cables are in the bag and you looked. Outlet bins bury carts under clothes. The label is still the label. Wipe it and read it. Estate sales sometimes have a shelf that was one household’s systems. The manuals are in a drawer. Open the drawer.
Region, language, and a label that is almost the game
A title can exist in more than one region, and the boards, the language on the label, and the shell shape are how you tell them apart. A North American cart and a Japanese cart of a famous name are not interchangeable in a listing, even when the art looks related. The language on the label is the first line of the title. A Player’s Choice, a Greatest Hits banner, and a later “not for resale” mark are reprints or bundles. They play. They are not the first release, and a buyer searching the first release will return them if you hid the banner by cropping the photo.
Manuals follow the same split. A manual in a language the cart does not speak is not that cart’s manual. A box from a bundle, with different art and no separate catalog number, is a bundle box. Say so. Collectors who want a variant will pay for the variant you actually have, which is a better sale than a return on the variant you implied. If you cannot read the small print, do not name the variant. The common name of the game, plus “label reads,” is enough until you can.
Worth can read a title from a clear label. It cannot see a counterfeit board through the shell, and it cannot boot the cart. The game guides cover NES, Game Boy, and N64 in more detail. The habit is one question: what is the exact title, and did it run? If you cannot answer either, the price you pay has to be the price of not knowing.